


Blood and Oranges

by zeldadestry



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Community: 100_women, Triple Drabble
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-30
Updated: 2007-12-30
Packaged: 2017-10-14 05:49:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/146059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zeldadestry/pseuds/zeldadestry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>regrets and compromises</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blood and Oranges

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt 64, ‘smell’, for 100_women fanfic challenge

Dorcas believes it would be a strategic advantage for the Order and the Ministry to use Muggle weapons in fighting this war. She owns a gun and Alice holds it in her hands and finds it frighteningly heavy compared to her wand. She shivers and says, “It’s so cold.”

“If you keep it in your hands or against your body, it warms.”

Alice hates the thought of having it close to her flesh. “And this thing that Muggles have made, it is as powerful as Avada Kedavra?”

“The result is the same,” Dorcas says, leaning in towards Alice on the couch. Her breath smells of peppermint and her hair of oranges. She is just out of the shower and her wet hair is slicked back behind her ears. It makes the most of her strong jaw and her dark eyes. Everything about her is so fresh, scrubbed clean, and yet here they sit, talking about death.

“It kills?”

“Yes.”

Tears burn in Alice’s eyes, and she immediately tries to blink them back. Sorrow is not despair, and yet to show a moment’s pain is considered weakness. Frank has told her, time and again, “Darling, you’ve got to smile a little more. If Aurors look afraid, everyone else panics. Be strong.” Alice mutely hands the gun back. Dorcas places it on the table in front of them.

“What’s wrong?” Dorcas asks.

“I don’t know if I can do this anymore.”

“Close your eyes,” she says, and her voice is too tender, and Alice feels more tears arriving, unbidden and shameful and impossible to stop. “What other choice do we have?” Dorcas’s cheek rests against her own, and Alice’s tears wet both their flesh and she is glad her eyes are closed against this horror, she is glad she can not see.


End file.
